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Deputy Le Tissier Suspended For 12 Months

States members favour the conduct panel's recommendation to ban him from the States for 1 year with no pay.

Deputy Tina Bury wanted to move the issue to the top of the agenda and the House agreed by 18 votes to 15.

After SACC President Deputy Carl Meerveld opened proceedings, Deputy Le Tissier stood before the House and spoke in his own defence:

"I would naturally like to apologise to the assembly and once again to the public, both for my actions and for engendering this debate, taking away time that should be spent on other matters. I also apologise for bringing the States and the island into disrepute. 

"A large part of the narrative around this matter has come from the media. Having read the panel's report you will see a large part of it is inaccurate. I maintain that some of the panel's findings, in my own mind, are not correct. But I accept that is their decision."

Deputy Peter Ferbrache said he would reluctantly support the decision to suspend Deputy Le Tissier but he has these words for those that had attacked him on social media:

"To those out there, the keyboard cowards, the people who don't have the courage to come up and say what they think of you, the people who want to decimate your reputation by using fallacious comments with out any substance at all - grow up! Be Human! Have respect for people like Deputy Le Tissier who made a mistake and his family and don't criticise them."

Deputy Yvonne Burford also said she would support the suspension but agreed that the process needed to be overhauled:

"It might be that in time we change the methods by which a member's conduct is judged and a move to a Commission of Standards is overdue. But for now the system is that a panel makes a recommendation and I don't think that this assembly should seek to overturn its recommendations without overwhelming reasons. I do not think that overwhelming reasons exist."

The vote to suspend Deputy Le Tissier for 12 months without pay was carried by 25 votes to 5 with 9 abstentions.

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